More BS from the greenies...

[TFOGGER]

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/...hours-per-day/

I have to assume that this is a typo:The tower produces 110 megawatts of energy for 12 hours a day according to the company, which works out to roughly 1 million megawatts per year.

Surely they mean 1 million megawatt-hours per year… But, then again, I doubt the EcoWatch “journalist” knows or even cares about the difference between megawatts and megawatt-hours. And there’s a bit of a math problem
110 MW * 12 hr/day * 365 days/yr = 481,800 MWh/yr
481,800 is not roughly 1 million.
This power plant cost $975,000,000 to build ($8.9 million per MW, ten times the cost of a natural gas fired power plant). Taxpayers are on the hook for 76% of this cost through Federal loan guarantees. The 25-yr wholesale price guarantee of $135/MWh, about 30% higher than the average US retail price (all sectors). This is the “good news.”
While the plant has barely started operating, there is some production history.

Soooo... even at full capacity, it will produce less than half of what they claimed, and to date it's never run at more than about 25%...so it cost almost a billion dollars to build a plant that produces around 12.5 percent of the power it was supposed to...


Math is hard for liberals...

[BPTactical]

You think math is hard for liberals?
Try them with truth and facts!
Their heads will explode like a zit on a 14 year old.

[DavieD55]

Meanwhile in leftist kalifonya they're having power shortages and are expecting up to 14 days without power in some places.

[ColoradoTJ]

On a recent trip out to Southern California, I was totally shocked at how many solar projects are being constructed.

I will comment on this after I drop my kids off.

[roberth]

Natural gas and coal are available 24x7. Wind and solar cannot even begin to match that availability nor can they match the low cost of natural gas and coal. Wind and solar need batteries to get to 24x7 coverage, creation and disposal of toxic batteries is something else the left ignores.

Solar is pretty good on the individual home except the for the subsidies paid by the net tax payer directly to the people who get solar. Dump the subsidy and watch all these solar companies go under.

Wind energy was a waste of time and material and skill from the git-go, much less treat as a viable source of energy. Don't bring up the bird kill caused by wind farms, the nature nazis won't hear it.

[DavieD55]

Natural gas and coal are available 24x7. Wind and solar cannot even begin to match that availability nor can they match the low cost of natural gas and coal. Wind and solar need batteries to get to 24x7 coverage, creation and disposal of toxic batteries is something else the left ignores.

Solar is pretty good on the individual home except the for the subsidies paid by the net tax payer directly to the people who get solar. Dump the subsidy and watch all these solar companies go under.

Wind energy was a waste of time and material and skill from the git-go, much less treat as a viable source of energy. Don't bring up the bird kill caused by wind farms, the nature nazis won't hear it.

And the communists are attempting to ban all oil and gas production in colorado with Initiative 78

http://www.journal-advocate.com/ster...ld-ban-oil-gas.

[TFOGGER]

They also announced the decommissioning of the Diablo Canyon nuke plant, the last remaining nuclear power plant in California (although not until 2025).

[TFOGGER]

Natural gas and coal are available 24x7. Wind and solar cannot even begin to match that availability nor can they match the low cost of natural gas and coal. Wind and solar need batteries to get to 24x7 coverage, creation and disposal of toxic batteries is something else the left ignores.

Solar is pretty good on the individual home except the for the subsidies paid by the net tax payer directly to the people who get solar. Dump the subsidy and watch all these solar companies go under.

Wind energy was a waste of time and material and skill from the git-go, much less treat as a viable source of energy. Don't bring up the bird kill caused by wind farms, the nature nazis won't hear it.

The whole point of this particular project was to store the energy as heat (molten salt) for use during time of demand and limited or no production. Unfortunately, the results have been less than spectacular, and the cost has been astronomical.

[ColoradoTJ]

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/...hours-per-day/



Soooo... even at full capacity, it will produce less than half of what they claimed, and to date it's never run at more than about 25%...so it cost almost a billion dollars to build a plant that produces around 12.5 percent of the power it was supposed to...


Math is hard for liberals...

Math is hard for Conservatives as well I guess.

So if anyone actually read the article on this solar project, it is actually pretty cool and cost effective. I will get into that a little later.

https://ecowatch.com/2016/06/20/cres...ntrated-solar/

Since the whatsupwiththat.com cherry picked from the article, we should put facts out there. The plant is a 24-7 operating power plant, and very cool to boot. So the original article that says close to 1 million megawatt hours per year....well it would be 963,600 MWH if an outage is never had (that is never happening). Usually a steam turbine requires at least a borescope
inspection every 25, 50, 75K hours and a major inspection (B inspection) every 100K operating hours. A few things go into that calculation (Life factor/hours of operation/start ups).

Now, for the cost:

Personally, I think Solar and Hydro are the best renewable energy sources we have today. I am not a huge fan of wind turbines since they are not very reliable since we all cannot make the wind blow. To be fair, water is not always needed or available either, and a few clouds in the sky can really reduce the output of solar. I see this every day at work, and it is not fun to deal with.

In some of these states that has to import most of their power (CA), they get some really expensive power. I have a few buddies in AZ that sell power to CA for over 650.00 per MWH from various sources. That 135.00 is looking pretty cheap now isn't it? This is not a daily cost, and the real time marketers buy and sell power to get the best deal. Fuel prices are usually locked in on Coal due to long term purchase agreements (let's just say 18.00 per ton of Powder River Basin coal), but Natural gas is traded daily and can vary rather quickly. Right now, NG is trading at a very lucrative price. I can't say how much (I like my job). With all this solar being built, this has been an issue with other units. Companies are backing down units to allow room for the solar. Then a cloud cover comes over and then these units have to ramp up to cover the lost generation. California has over 5000MW of solar. Arizona Power & Light has to deal with 400MW of solar coming on in the morning, and what I have been hearing from friends it has been interesting to say the least.


Here is the ass kicker. With all the new regulations coming in 2017 with coal fired power plants, there are quite a few just moth balling them and building combined cycle plants (whom do you think will absorb that cost?). For the companies that are installing Scrubbers to keep operating (usually 100-150M per unit to scrub), there is an added cost. Combined cycles have a way better heat rate, fuel is cheaper (for now), and in most cases do not need an SCR (scrubber/catalyst for NOx), cost is cheaper to build as well. So what happens when coal plants are not around? Think NG is going to spike up? You bet your ass they will....and whom do you think will pay for this cost?

Get ready Ladies and Gentlemen, 2017-19 should get pretty interesting. For now, I am really glad I live in a Municipal owned utility. The cost difference from just outside the Colorado Springs service area is an eye opener for me (parents live in Canon City, co-workers that live in Pueblo or Monument).

[TFOGGER]

I'm not saying Solar is not the way to go, just that this particular project has yet to produce even a large fraction of what it was designed to(much like many nuke plants), yet the greenies are hailing it as a huge success. Conceptually, this design has considerable merit, but it has not yet realized that potential.

Photovoltaic generation, on the other hand, is a deep dark rabbit hole. Between the ecological impacts and energy required to manufacture the systems make these unworkable on a large scale, and uneconomical for most applications on a smaller scale.